Social Media

HOW TO: Engage and Mobilize Facebook Fans Beyond the "Like"

Last year, we encouraged businesses to move out of broadcast mode and start a two-way dialogue with their Facebook fans. As Facebook marketing has matured and more companies have had an opportunity to experiment and innovate, this approach has become de rigueur. New tactics are emerging that raise the bar for what constitutes successful engagement, particularly as brands and digital marketing agencies look to engage and activate a large number of fans.

According to Daniel Stein, co-founder of digital marketing agency EVB, more of the agency's clients are now asking for programs that mobilize their millions of passionate fans on Facebook to take action in the real world.

"It's important to remember that 'Likes' aren't just mechanical clicks of a button — they're people," said Stein. "For many of our large brand clients, we're essentially working with a million-plus person army — there's a huge amount of opportunity with those kinds of numbers."

Here are four ways brands have mobilized fans and taken engagement to the next level.

1. Inciting a Fan Mob: Skittles

"Mob the Rainbow" is an ongoing social media program developed for Skittles by EVB that gives fans the opportunity to "mob" together to cause a fun or quirky outcome. For example, in the first campaign, called “Valentine the Rainbow,” Skittles asked its "Mob" to send a Valentine to an unsuspecting parking enforcement officer who was deserving of some love. Over 45,000 people joined the Mob and elected to attend the event. Cards were delivered to the stunned meter maid on Valentine’s Day by a Skittles Mob “representative” dressed in a cupid costume and driving a Skittles van. Video captured at the event was then re-broadcast back to the audience through a “Mob the Rainbow” tab on the brand’s Facebook Page.

In a subsequent campaign, Skittles mobilized the troops to send a student to bowling college. For “Scholarship the Rainbow,” Skittles told the mob that it would require 100,000 Likes to generate a $10,000 scholarship. Within a week, Skittles had received 150,000 Likes, and young James Fulp was on his way to bowling college.

The program has been a huge success: in the six months following the launch of Mob the Rainbow, the Skittles fan base has quadrupled to more than 14 million fans.

2. Mobilizing Fans for a Cause: Kraft

Kraft also tapped the power of its large fan base to achieve an outcome in the real world. The company recently worked with digital marketing agency 360i to launch a football-themed "Fight Hunger Facebook Game" to support its Huddle to Fight Hunger initiative, whose goal is to donate millions of meals to needy families. The idea was to enable consumers to get involved in the cause of helping to fight hunger, creating a social engagement that by its very nature encouraged individuals to spread the word.

Here's how the game works: fans click on the app to start a "passing drive" down the field, throwing a "pass" to a friend (i.e. sharing the app with a friend). For every pass thrown, Kraft donates a meal to Feeding America. If that friend then also "passes" the app to a friend, Kraft will donate another meal. After the fourth pass, you and your friends will have scored a touchdown, and Kraft will donate 7 more meals to Feeding America, for a total of 10 meals per passing drive.

To date, the game has generated nearly 200,000 "passes" and almost 220,000 meal donations to Feeding America.

3. Engaging Local Communities: Kohl’s

Another great example of mobilizing a fan base for a cause (and amplifying the reach of the brand) comes from Kohl's. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its "Kohl's Cares" for Kids program, Kohl’s decided to give back to its community by distributing $10 million to 20 deserving schools. Kohl's engaged its three million-strong fan base as well as parents and schools to promote the program, providing these audiences with potent incentives and tools to support the schools they love and drive voting.

As part of the program, Kohl’s worked with Context Optional to create a custom application that allowed Facebook fans to vote for schools, comment, upload photos and share ideas of how their school would use the money, empowering communities to spread the world. To encourage competitive voting, they also created a leaderboard to rank school votes. Fans were able to announce their participation in the program and invite friends to vote via their news feeds.

In all, fans cast a total of 12 million votes for schools of their choice and generated roughly 400 posts per day on the Kohl's Page.

4. Making Your Page a Destination: NBA

The NBA was one of the first companies to understand and embrace the concept of engagement while other companies were still on the social media sidelines, using tactics such as polls and quizzes to spark a two-way dialogue with fans from the start. This early focus on engagement helped the league grow its fan base from about 1.5M to over 7M fans, the most fans of any major sports league.

The NBA scored big points with this approach to engagement during the 2010 playoffs, when it unleashed a torrent of content that turned the NBA Facebook Page into a daily destination for fans and turned its fans into vocal brand advocates. One key tactic was to post video clips from the previous night's games accompanied by a Fan Appz poll, asking questions like "Which dunk was best?" or "What was the best comeback?" Fans taking the polls could then share their responses with their friends, who often clicked through to the take the polls themselves and become fans of the NBA. The collective power of the NBA fan base not only helped to boost ratings for the games, it also drove millions of video stream impressions on NBA.com and kept the games top-of-mind for viewers over the entire course of the playoffs.

What's Hot

More in Social Media

What's New

What's Rising

What's Hot

Mashable
is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.